GuildMasterpiece Theater

Well, my guildies have decided it is time for a new loot system, which stresses me out because it means I am not responsible for coming up with something fair, and easy to maintain and manage.  I am not a fan of DKP, because the rich just get richer, but I do understand its purpose…. I am going to have to come up with something though.  Currently we are just rolling, and this is really stressing people out with tier 5 gear.  Which, is understandable, but it means I have to come up with something better.  I guess you guys will be hearing a LOT about it in the upcoming weeks until I have it all sorted out.  Anyone have any super cool addons or mods they use?

You know what I am talking about… the VERY reason we spend massive amounts of free time running a guild on a video game.  The feeling that you get when your guild just downed a boss for the first time!  That is the best part of being a GM, watching your entire raid work together like clockwork… tossing the core, not standing in fire, targeting the totem… you name it your guild has it DOWN.  Now that makes for an awesome night raiding.

Ahhh epix…. 

You know you have them… the members of your guild that used to be officers or even guild masters in another guild but are now just regular members of your guild that feel the need to tell you how to do things. Sometimes these people blow my mind with all their suggestions and ideas about how they did things… you know back before everyone got pissed and /gquit or their guild just broke up… I mean, isn’t it obvious to them that the way they ran their guild wasn’t successful because it no longer exists? I wish I had more answers as to how to deal with these people, but usually my response is to smile, thank them for their effort and do things my way. HAHA is that wrong?

She is mean evil, she has creepy hair like tentacles, and she shoots people with the bow I need.  Lady Vashj, I think I hate you.  All night long we wiped, got her down to 15% twice, and both times I just KNEW she was going down, but… she didn’t.  My guild was less than enthused at the end of the raid, and so was I.  And today is, of course, reset day… so if we want to kill her, we have to get to her first!

Sometimes at the end of those kinds of nights…you know, two flasks down a repair bill that will require an entire round of dailies to pay off kinda of nights… I just want to pull my hair out and sign off for a week or two while I throw down on some Hello Kitty Adventure Island!  But, I also really want that bow.    So…. another new week, another fresh start of raiding!  And, this week, I think we will down her…

That is the kind of thing that is so hard as a guild master.  Keeping that positive attitude, ya know?  Remembering that even though everyone is ready to pull their hair out, it is just raiding, and next week the instance will be fresh and new for you to start all over again!  I really think that sometimes the nights of wiping can be just as fun as killing that boss as long as you are doing it as a group and having a good time when you do it!

He does notice! He DOES!

A little history, I have been reading the Big Red Kitty Blog now for quite some times. I think he knows what he is talking about when it comes to hunters, and I have definitely learned a LOT from his posts. A couple of weeks back he posted this post, and I just so happened to be looking for the perfect blog to start up about all things warcraft, but I hadn’t come up with the perfect idea. Well, when I saw his post, I knew what I had to do! So, I quickly got to work on a blogspot blog, and posted a couple of things. When my husband the web designer saw what I was doing he jumped on it, and I got my very own website!

Well, today it got a little cooler. I logged onto my computer, checked my email and went to browsing my daily reads. BRK is on that list, so when I saw he was doing a link post, I quickly started scrolling looking for us, and there we were! AHHHHH our first link, and it was from BRK himself! How fun is that? I mean, he called me a guy, (wow, he fixed it… and groveled.  That’s almost enough to make a girl roll alliance… almost…) but still pretty cool, eh?

This is just crazy.  Why hasn’t blizzard done anything to stop this yet?  People think they have protected their account and that everything is fine, and then all the sudden… You log on and watch an officer clear out the guild bank.  This is crazy.  This is just stupid.  Why isn’t there something as simple as a password protection on the guild banks to stop this from happening.  I mean, it looks like a giant vault, why not have to click on some numbers in order to open it with a combination type thing?  That is my official blue suggestion.  There should be a keypad that the GM sets the combo to, and people have to click a series of numbers (not type them… then the keyloggers would get the password!) in order to access the bank.

Why, you ask am I posting about this?  Because my bank was hacked.  I feel like the keyloggers literally wait until I am logged off for the night, and then log onto this officer’s account and clear out my entire guild bank.  The thing is, it isn’t like we don’t get the stuff back, because we do.  Blizzard takes a log of your entire bank, and they are pretty cool about returning your stuff, but it just SUCKS.  Why would we even continue to use guild banks if this keeps happening?

So, I take a lot of flack. I feel like that is part of the job as a GM, sometimes you just gotta deal with unhappy people, etc. and that is how the ol cookie crumbles. My officers tell me a lot that I am just too nice, and for the most part I probably am, but I feel like keeping people happy and having fun with the game makes your guild a better place to be. I have fun running stuff, so that is how I enjoy my fifteen bucksamonth, but for a lot of people it is the fun of playing with friends, etc.

Sigh, I digress… the point I am trying to make here is I am willing to take a lot of flack from a lot of members, and deal with a lot of unpleasing situations, I think that comes with the territory, but what I am not willing to do is feel disrespected. I get this member tonight that tells me, “I just don’t like you, and I don’t like anything you do, but all my friends are here so I just put up with you.” My response went something along the lines of “Wow, that was a pretty mean thing to say to someone who spends so much time making this guild run.” To which he went on to tell me just how much he hated me, what a b* I was etc. My answer… I actually used the remove member button. I still can’t believe I actually did it, but I did! And you know what… I am okay with it… that guy isn’t in my guild causing me grief anymore, and as a result for my finally growing a pair… my guild is a happier place.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I am not saying /gkick is the first button you need to hit when someone pisses you off, but if they just don’t respect you and all the time you put into the GAME that they are playing. Then guess what… it feels pretty dern good to see “soandso has been kicked out of the guild by Cheetara.”

So, after a fun night of wiping on some serious raid bosses, there is almost always someone telling you how to run the guild.  These people are tough to deal with, because on the one hand you just want to tell them to GTFO and use your mind to punch them in the face, but on the other hand… they sometimes have some good ideas.  The secret to dealing with these people is to not let them ambush you.  People are frustrated after a night of wiping, but most of the time wiping is a necessary evil in the progression game, but this is not the time to get into a “here is how the guild should be ran” discussion.  I handle this a couple of different ways… the first is to take a quick break after the raid (if I want to keep playing that is.)  A lot of times those people are just full of steam and need a little chance to spout off, but sometimes they are spouting off to an entire raid , and this is not the time to take a quick break.  Instead, this is the time to grab them, put them in a locked channel and let them spout off to you.  And, if you listen to what they say, you might just walk away with a few ideas to make your guild better, but… probably not.  So log on your alt, and grind green whelplings in the swamp while they talk, that will help pass the time.

Ahh, loot. Loot is such a big deal in this game that I think it needs its own category. So many guilds handle this in SO many different ways, and it is such a touch category. Nothing can turn an otherwise lovely person into a green monster faster than a sweet professor plum. (That’s epic, for those of you who haven’t seen the best video ever… but I posted it below.) So… the age old question… who gets the loot?

Do you have one of those officers who loves to abuse his privelages by /gkicking people and then inviting them back?  Man, I do, and it drives me up the wall.  I mean, the guy is a nice enough guy, and a great officer he just thinks it is funny to abuse his power by kicking people out of the guild and then inviting them back immediatly after.  This, of course, deletes all their user notes, officer notes, and ranking, and upsets the people off when he does that.  It is enough to make a special rank, put him in it and not allow his /gkick privelages.  I do like that blizzard has a lot of stuff set up in the game to allow you to do cool stuff like that, so maybe I should take advantage of it, eh?